Legal Rights and Policy Reforms Needed for Widows

Widows’ legal rights are often disregarded. Widows are perceived as easy targets for exploitation in many countries, and destitution often follows. In many countries, particularly in Africa and Asia, widows experience significant legal issues that leave them stripped of their inheritance, their property rights and their social status. Addressing these systemic issues is vital to ensure that widows can live securely with dignity.

World Bank Policy Reforms

In seeking to mitigate the disadvantages widows experience, The World Bank lists important policy reforms that involve ownership of property, rights to inherit, the requirement for registration of customary marriages and widows’ pensions. Victoria Stanley, a World Bank land specialist, highlights how important it is to implement broad protective measures that ensure no one loses their home during times of crisis. She also calls for reform of inheritance laws and marital property regimes to facilitate more effective realization of women’s HLP (housing, land and property) rights.[1]

In some countries, great strides are being made in terms of passing laws to protect the rights of widows. In one state in Nigeria, for example, legislators passed laws in 2001 designed to prevent widows from being forced to shave their heads and being locked up with the corpse of their husband or compelled to marry a male relative of their late spouse. However, almost 20 years on, some of these practices still persist, showing how hard it is to enforce such reforms, especially in rural areas.[2]


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